Is this character too depressing?

[WarpTenLizard]

Trigger Warning: parent who has lost her children

Like so many people, I'm plotting my own OC ship and crew for a long-going story.

The first officer, Samaya Zaffar, is a "temporal clone." That is, she comes from an alternate future that has now been erased. Her timeline was a bad one, so for the most part she's helping the heroes to prevent it from happening happening again.

The twist: Zaffar had children in that other timeline, who got "erased." Naturally, she's searching for a way to get them back, without completely restoring their entire bad timeline.

The problem: I'm worried that this plot-line is too depressing .

The overall tone of my series is meant to be on the lighter side. In the vein of 90s-Trek (TNG, DS9 and "Voyager"), leaning just a tad towards "the Orville" and "Lower Decks."

So my two concerns are:

1. How can a character who's lost her kids have any moments of humor or levity?
2. I genuinely don't know how common it is to lose a child in real life, and how much such a plotline might hurt or offend.

Thoughts?

 

[CeJay]

That does sound tough if you’re looking for a more light hearted tone. Although, as far as character motivation goes, it’s pretty compelling.

Perhaps you could soften it somehow so that the timeline is not fully erased. It still exists but there is no obvious way for your character to get back to it. Or change it from an alternate timeline to an alternate universe. It exists but again, getting to it, is seemingly impossible. Perhaps she has a device or artifact that lets her connect to this universe somehow, e.g. see or feel her kids every so often, but not talk to them. Give her the reassurance that they are still there and make her so much more determined to find a way to reunite with them.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

That does sound tough if you’re looking for a more light hearted tone. Although, as far as character motivation goes, it’s pretty compelling.

Perhaps you could soften it somehow so that the timeline is not fully erased. It still exists but there is no obvious way for your character to get back to it. Or change it from an alternate timeline to an alternate universe. It exists but again, getting to it, is seemingly impossible. Perhaps she has a device or artifact that lets her connect to this universe somehow, e.g. see or feel her kids every so often, but not talk to them. Give her the reassurance that they are still there and make her so much more determined to find a way to reunite with them.

This is a seriously good idea to think about. Maybe if she's a Betazoid or something she still has a feint telepathic link to them.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

The primary character in Star Trek Hunter, Justice Minerva Irons, has lost two of her children and a few grandchildren in the Dominion War. She is very old and has a large number of children and grandchildren. She definitely has her lighter moments - even though she is a high functioning alcoholic. Her children and grandchildren were adults and died in the service, so that makes a difference.

You've certainly set yourself a challenge, but it can be done.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

The primary character in Star Trek Hunter, Justice Minerva Irons, has lost two of her children and a few grandchildren in the Dominion War. She is very old and has a large number of children and grandchildren. She definitely has her lighter moments - even though she is a high functioning alcoholic. Her children and grandchildren were adults and died in the service, so that makes a difference.

You've certainly set yourself a challenge, but it can be done.

I keep thinking of Drax from "Guardians of the Galaxy." His main plotline is avenging his murdered wife and kid, and somehow he's still a very comical character. But, I think the fact that Drax is not only an alien, but a very "alien" looking alien, helps soften the blow for the audience. My problem is that I really want Zaffar to be Human.

 

[DarKush]

I think that CeJay and Robert have given some good suggestions. I do think you can have the darkness keep the light in check to some extent or give Zaffar more of a sense of gallows humor. Odo could be acerbic and prickly, but also humorous in his own way, and also fit well in comedic scenes with Quark, so that might be a way to go. While Neelix was personally grating, VOY also played up the differences in personality between him and Tuvok. You might look to DS9 and VOY to see how they used humor. I'm guessing most comedies need the proverbial straight man/person, and perhaps Zaffar could be that for your series.

Spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Spoiler

While Dr. M'Benga wasn't dealing with the loss of a child he was trying to save his terminally ill daughter, but he kept his private pain to himself until things got out of hand.

Likewise, you could have Zaffar put on a game face around everyone else while dealing with her grief in private. Though I do like CeJay's idea because that gives her (and the readers) hope, and also creates a great motivation for the character that readers also easily grasp and also can get behind.

Another thought came to mind...Zaffar can be human but raised in or influenced by alien cultures. Or a human culture that's different than any we might know. She could come from a human colony world that has developed its own ways of dealing with grief.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

One question and one (long rambling) thought.

Question: Do other people know she is from an alternate (now deleted) timeline and what she is up to, or is she doing that all in secret and trying to manipulate events without her shipmates finding out?

Thought: If she's wanting to get her exact kids back then she'd need to find the sperm donor and try to do some genetic engineering in order to restore the very children she lost. This causes a few issues, one being the possibility that she might have to break the law to engineer the children she wants. Another being the relationship she had with her baby daddy, if it was just a donor arrangement or if she had a relationship with the father. Seeing as how he's not mentioned I'm assuming the former (but you can correct me on that), which would make getting his sample probably fairly straight forward, but if they were romantically involved then that would make it far more difficult as she would know things about him, some that may still be true in this timeline and others that would be radically different, which could put a huge strain on how they progressed.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

Thanks for the in-depth reply!

Question: Do other people know she is from an alternate (now deleted) timeline and what she is up to, or is she doing that all in secret and trying to manipulate events without her shipmates finding out?

I'd been going with the idea that everyone knows she's from an alternate timeline, but almost no one knows the details if her personal life. Now that you mention it though, Starfleet might have wanted to keep that all classified.

Since the story proper starts in the new-timeline version of the year she originally came from, and is thus a milestone of her "future" officially being over, that might be when Starfleet officially de-classifies her situation, allowing her to serve on a mainstream ship.

Thought: If she's wanting to get her exact kids back then she'd need to find the sperm donor and try to do some genetic engineering in order to restore the very children she lost.

Trying to engineer the kids into existence is actually another detail in Zaffar's backstory.

Another being the relationship she had with her baby daddy, if it was just a donor arrangement or if she had a relationship with the father.

As for her kids' dad: her husband, Dr. Stefan Quan, was her husband, but he died in her original timeline. In the new timeline, the couple hasn't met, until future-Zaffar violated the Temporal Prime Directive and told them about the kids. The three of them then attempted to create the first child, a son, in a lab. It failed, and they instead got twin girls. Attempts to create the second child a couple years later also failed. They all got into trouble with Starfleet, and to boot, younger-Zaffar and younger-Quan got divorced--not necessaroly because of the situation, but because in this tineline, their lives just went different directions.

That causes future-Zaffar some grief, when thinking about how long her own marriage might've lasted had her Stefan lived. She of course also feels guilty for derailing her younger selfish and younger Stefab's lives. And spirituality, as someone with one Hindu parent, Zaffar occasionally ponders that the new twin girls might be her original kids, reincarnated.

In any case, I'm three episodes into "Strange New Worlds," and realizing that dead relatives is surprisingly common in "Star Trek." At this point, I'm mostly just considering making Zaffar part Betazoid because it might he interesting. She might literally feel herself in two places at once. Since Betazoids sense the deaths of close relatives, I can use the face that she hasn't felt her kids deaths like she dud her husband's as a consistent hope-spot, to soften the blow of her sad situation for the readers.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

realizing that dead relatives is surprisingly common in "Star Trek."

And popular culture in general. Certainly sounds like you're committed to the story. The original question was how to balance comedic and heavy emotional content.

We do that every day. The best humor in stories is the natural humor that arises from people being observant, quick witted - our human ability to appreciate the absurd in the mundane. Far too much humor, especially in American movies and television, is written out of schadenfreude - which generally just makes the audience uncomfortable.

Think about the most fun you've had with friends just mucking around - not deliberately telling dad jokes, but making wisecracks about something heavy that you're dealing with. You can always sell humor like that, no matter how heavy the character's background is.

 

[Galen4]

I think everyone who responded has had some great thoughts.

The only thing I can add is that a character going through the grieving process can sometimes make an interesting story arc for them. Especially if you shy away from resurrections. In the real world there is no hope of seeing a loved one again after they've passed. (At least not on the mortal plane.) So, I would just let your character work through the process of grief. And what a hero to make that sacrifice!

And yet, this being science fiction and all.... will your character falter at a critical moment? Like being tempted to let that dystopian timeline come back just to see her children again? That uncertainty could make for some great intrigue.

I'll be waiting for it.

 

[dmac]

Sometimes you need to find a different angle to tell a story.
Your 1st officer Samaya has no kids that she knows of. She's on a deep space mission when her alternative life begins phasing into her world. At first the ships Doctor advises her that she's only feeling regret for pursuing a career over family but she continues to be overcome by these surreal alt events with her children until she's convinced they have been taken and goes on a quest to get them back.
We never know if she's gone space happy, lost in a parallel universe or under some sort of Klingon mind shifter.
Anyway, Never mess with Mama Bear.